II. I- La determinación por la administración tributaria: relación con los derechos del contribuyente y las garantías del debido proceso:
II.III.I La Motivación de los actos administrativos y el derecho a la defensa.-
working together, the design process and making a guitar
that Jon Gomm couldn’t break
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and it’ll just shatter. I tried to find out if anyone was doing anything to fix this problem. What was your solution? What was your solution?
It turned out that a popular way was to create a sandwich top, where you take two pieces of wood and put a slab of Nomex, which is a bulletproof material, between them. I didn’t want that, because if the top wood wore away after a few years the Nomex would be revealed, and that would look terrible! It would be like when someone’s skin comes off in a sci-fi movie and you realise they were an android the whole time. Anyway, I found out that some ancient guitars from the 1930s were built with two-ply tops, using two pieces of really high-quality spruce and offsetting them at an angle for strength. When you bend a piece of wood it will snap along the grain: it’s very hard to snap it against the grain. Put two pieces together and offset the grain, and you increase the strength. Apparently these two- ply guitars from the 1930s were terrible, but
I thought that if anyone could do it right, it would be George Lowden.
Why did you choose spruce and cedar? Why did you choose spruce and cedar? Well, you have to have spruce because it’s strong, but I actually prefer the sound of cedar and I always have, although I knew it was more fragile and that I might well break it. I suggested combining the two woods, with the tougher spruce on the outside for strength and the cedar on the inside, which would create most of the tone. No one has ever used that combination for a guitar top before.
The sides and the back of the guitar are black cherry, by the way: that was an ecological choice, as mahogany and rosewood are scarce, and dominate the market purely for reasons of tradition. For more information on the subject, check out the Leonardo Project – it’s a game- changer (www.leonardo-guitar-research.com). It must have been exciting to see it come to life. It must have been exciting to see it come to life. As they worked on it, and sent me photos of it in
progress, I was getting more and more nervous. I thought to myself ‘This is George Lowden! I’ve convinced him to do this thing – what if it’s crap and doesn’t work?’ But they actually built two: one with the regular spruce top, and one with my hybrid. The tonal difference between them is huge. The Hybrid sounds like it’s a couple of years old, rather than a new guitar, and has a greatly increased volume with much more bass. The first time I played a big chord on the Hybrid, I couldn’t understand how all this volume could come from all different directions. It was an absolutely massive sound that seemed to spread out everywhere. I love a thunderous bass: I like to downtune the E string to A. On other guitars I can’t really hear that note when it’s not unamplified, but with the Hybrid I can. It’s like a baritone guitar. In terms of the guitar’s overall EQ, it’s moved the midrange peak up slightly. These guitars sound a little more like modern North American guitars that I’ve played, like a Greenfield for example. Those things cost about $24,000: it’s that kind of sound! nn
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W
ith Jon there was the opportunity to design something unique – his playing is very special – mesmerising visually as well as musically. It was a challenge to me even more so because of his long relationship with Wilma [Jon’s well-worn current Lowden guitar].Often if a great player has been playing one guitar for years they find shortcomings in any new instrument and that presented me with a problem. However, in the end there was no problem because Jon asked me to experiment with a double top – cedar on inside and spruce on outside. I decided to try it that way round because Jon does ‘age’ his guitars with loads of contact. Therefore
spruce on the outside was the choice – with cedar being softer and thus more susceptible to damage.
I consider a signature model only if either the player is exceptional and or he or she has been playing Lowden for a long time. Jon more than qualifies on both counts.
It’s an honour for me to make a signature model for any artist – but I don’t want a host of signature models for marketing purposes – it’s a collaboration which helps us both.
I learn how to design for a particular player and he benefits if I succeed in the design. There is a real challenge for me to come up with a design that is a really good fit with the signature’s player’s style. In Jon’s case he had ideas himself, which gave
me a head start.
I was a bit nervous with Jon’s guitar, wondering how it would work with this top design and non-tropical wood choices. Thankfully, he loved it from the first moment. Choosing the thicknesses and laminating method for the double top was a question of trial and error. Getting the voicing right was also a question of trying to sense the way this top would vibrate in comparison to a solid top. We work largely by hand and don’t have huge amounts of equipment, and so we used an old school